Conventionally, there is an image processing apparatus such as a multifunction copier (MFP) equipped with a so-called scan/send function. An image processing apparatus equipped with a scan/send function can scan a paper document with an image scanning unit such as an image scanner, digitize the image, send the electronic data to an external storage medium and store the data therein. When digitizing a document with an image processing apparatus in this manner, typically, the user wants two things: (1) When the document electronic data (hereinafter called a digitized document) is made visible by display or by printing (hereinafter called reproduction), the quality of the characters in the reproduced document should be within a range such as to allow the user to read the document without hardship and to use the reproduced document for business purposes without difficulty; (2) the data size should be as small (that is, as easy to handle) as possible.
However, the quality of the digitized document thus produced cannot be confirmed unless a file of the digitized document (an electronic file) is opened and reproduced with a personal computer (PC) or the like having a reproduction capability. As a result, once the user opens the digitized document with a PC or the like and confirms that the desired quality (if characters, the character quality) has not been achieved, the user must redo the work of digitizing the document using an MFP. Consequently, the further apart the apparatus used for reproduction (for example a PC) and the apparatus used to carry out digitization (for example an MFP), the greater the loss of time.
A variety of proposals have been made to solve this problem. For example, as one such solution, an arrangement has been proposed in which the digitized document is reproduced by printing the digitized document prior to sending the electronic data to the storage medium and enabling the user to confirm the quality of the digitized document then and there (for example, see Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2000-236410). In addition, an arrangement has been proposed in which a portion of the scanned electronic data is displayed on, for example, a liquid crystal display (LCD) of an apparatus used for digitization (MFP), enabling the user to confirm the quality of the digitized document then and there (for example, see Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2003-264672).
However, executing printing of a document each time that document is digitized as with the invention described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2000-236410 results in a waste of paper. In addition, with Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2003-264672, it is necessary for the user to determine by trial and error that portion of the document the quality of which the user wishes most to confirm, for example the part with the smallest print, in order to display that portion on an LCD or other display unit, which is time-consuming.